The Princess's Detective
by Haiza Tyri
Summary: Sherlock Holmes takes Mr Carrisford's place in searching for Sara Crewe after her father dies. AU for both Sherlock Holmes and A Little Princess.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: This is a completely AU examination of the notion that instead of Mr Carrisford, Sherlock Holmes might have been the one to seek out Sara Crewe when her father died. Please note that there are many changes to the canonical timeline: Watson's wife Mary did not die while Holmes was "dead" but survived and by 1895 had five children, so, naturally, Watson did not move back in with Holmes when he returned; the cases described after Holmes' return in 1894 mostly did not take place because of other events which this story will elucidate. Aspects of the "Little Princess" stories have changed as well, but you will find those out. Other than that, I hope you will find your Holmes still Holmes-y and your Little Princess still Little Princess-y.**

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**It had been touch-and-go with Holmes' life for some time, but we succeeded in saving it, just in time for Christmas that year of 1895. My wife and children were pleased to finally have me back, but we were all more deeply pleased at the survival of my friend. How he had survived that fortnight's voyage back from India already in the grip of brain fever (which we now call meningitis), whether it was thanks to his own iron will, or to the nursing skills of the _lascar_ called Ram Dass who had attached himself to him, or whether we ought to attribute it to a miracle, I will never know, but survive it he did, and survive the long fight at St. Bart's he did as well.

Whether he would survive the following months was less certain. With brain fever, or meningitis, comes certain dangers. The first and most common is death. But worse, in Holmes' opinion, is the possible loss of mental faculties, the delirium, confusion, and weakening of the brain. Of all the illnesses to beset Holmes on his case in India, brain fever was the worst that could happen. He found his usual acuity gone, found himself struggling between equally valid choices, found himself unable to sustain for very long a single train of thought without wandering away. In vain I comforted him that it was likely to be temporary, while the brain fever was still upon him, but it cast him into a depression. He had other reasons for his depression as well, which I did not know then but very soon came to know intimately.

Meanwhile, we brought him back home to 221B Baker Street. He no longer occupied the two bedrooms and sitting room alone but had taken over the lease for all of B some year ago, thinking he would want more room for experimentation and freedom to indulge the odd whims that Mrs Hudson had often complained of. My own home and surgery, somewhat to my own astonishment at the time, had ended up being just around the corner; I shared it with my beloved wife Mary and five children. I could only hope that the school for girls in 220 Baker Street next to Holmes would not disturb his convalescence.

Holmes was a sad, pathetic sight as we brought him home very early in January of 1896. My wife Mary, who had known him well, wept to see him, though she did not let him see, because she knew what he would think of it. His long form was hunched over as we led him slowly up the steps, his jaundiced skin stretched far too tightly over his fine bones. He looked twenty years older than he was. There was even suddenly a touch of white at his temples, where the hair had always been the most perfect raven black. His eyes, too, were dull and haunted.

I paid no attention to the crowd watching us, his nurse and me, as we helped him into the house, or I might have seen the little girl in scanty black watching with a hungry look in her eyes. Holmes says he saw her and thought nothing of her, beyond an automatic note that the once-fine, now-bedraggled state of her clothing indicated that she was not a beggar. If he had had his full faculties about him, the whole case might have been solved then and there. As it was, he saw nothing but a little girl who was not a beggar and promptly forgot about her in the fevered haze he was under.

Ram Dass, at a loss for something to do while Holmes was in hospital, had completely furnished the nearly empty house in a style that suited him, the rich, Anglo-Indian style of many newly-returned British officers. I wasn't quite sure what Holmes would think of that, but in his state he hardly cared. For several days after we moved him from St. Bart's, he could not stir from his bed. It was only when at last he was ensconced in his old wingback chair before the fire days later, more enervated than I had ever seen him even at his most bored, that I learned the full tale of what had drawn him to India and what caused so much of the depression and the wild anxieties that had attended him in the fever.


	2. Chapter 2

Four years before, when Holmes "died," he chose to exercise his new freedom by traveling to places around the world where he had never been but which he had always had some interest in. One of his favorite countries, as he told me when he returned in 1894, was Nepal, but Nepal could never be entirely separated from India in his mind, and he had spent some months in India. While there, he was able to give two friends named Crewe and Carrisford the benefit of his assistance on a case which included proving Carrisford to be the true heir of a small fortune and personally guaranteeing the ownership of certain diamond mines. It is a complicated tale and one which it took him long to tell me, but the full tale of it involves certain personages who must not, at present, be named, and so I am barred from setting it all down here. Perhaps I may tell it in the future. At present, let it suffice to say that Holmes found himself more personally tangled up in the mystery than he was used to and was pleased to put it behind him and strike out for Nepal.

Two years later he returned to England and to his old life, refreshed and ready once again to pursue his own particular London criminals. It was less than a year following when, as he and I prepared to wrap up a case together (my dear wife Mary has never asked me to give up my associations with Holmes' work, much as I know it worries her at times; I love her all the more for it and curtail the more dangerous activities for her sake and the children's), a telegram came for Holmes. He tore it open hastily and, scanning it, went white to the lips. After a moment he dashed back into the house and began rummaging wildly in his bedroom. I found him cramming clothes into a carpetbag.

"Holmes, whatever are you doing?"

"I must return to India. I will take passage on the _India Star,_ which is this evening leaving for Bombay. I don't know when I will be back. Not many months, I hope."

"Holmes, what _is_ this? What is going on?"

He was still white as he stopped to stare at me. "I have made a grievous error, and at least one person has already paid for it with his life. I have no time or inclination to explain further. Do not ask."

I knew when it was futile to oppose him, so I did not ask, but I pressed him, "Holmes, what about the case?"

"What case?"

"The case we are on! The affair of the harpoon!"

"Oh, that. Nothing so simple, Watson. I have advertised in the newspapers for a harpooner. When the applicants come, you must have Lestrade arrest the murderer. Goodbye, Watson."

He wrung my hand and was away, despite my slightly despairing cry after him. I did not understand his instructions in the slightest. However, putting my head together with Lestrade's, we were able to fulfill them and did indeed end up capturing the murderer. It was quite obvious, when one looked at things the right way. Holmes, meanwhile, returned to India and came back five months later as I have described, a wreck.

The telegram had been from the young man named Tom Carrisford. He had sunk all his new fortune into diamond mines in India, on Holmes' recommendation, and persuaded his friend Captain Crewe to do so as well. The two young men turned out to be terrible business managers and between them and certain unscrupulous characters managed to lose the diamond mines and their fortunes into the bargain. Carrisford, suffering terribly from the brain fever that was then sweeping as a virus (as we now know it) through their small community and believing he was to blame for it all, fled in delirium, while his friend Crewe died raving. Coming slightly to his senses, Carrisford was able to send the telegram to Holmes, begging him to come and help him. Not only did he wish to regain his fortune and his honour, but he was desperate to find and help the small daughter of his friend Crewe. His actions, he believed, had wiped out Crewe's fortune and left the child destitute, without relations or place to live, and he did not know where she was. He had thought to find out her location from papers among his friend's things, but when he returned, he found a fire had destroyed everything. With no thought of blaming Holmes for his misfortunes, he turned to him as the only person who could help find her.

Holmes, for his part, never an emotional man, is a logical one, and logic told him instantly how he had set in place the train of events that led to Crewe's death and his child's destitution. How many times have I told him since then that he cannot possibly blame himself for others' actions? Carrisford and Crewe did not _have_ to put their fortunes into the mines, or trust certain people. But even I can see the logic that brings it back to Holmes' door, and for a man who has spent his whole life protecting innocent people, the idea that he has, by extension, caused the death of one and the destitution of another is a devastating one.

It was almost too late when he made it to Bombay. He found young Carrisford in the final stages of his illness, almost too far gone to be useful. The horribly ironic thing was that the diamond mines had made a reappearance, thanks to the finding of some documents Carrisford thought he had lost or had been stolen. With his last strength, he made a will leaving everything to his friend's daughter and making Holmes executor. Carrisford died the next day, leaving a deeply shaken Holmes to take up the search for little Sara Crewe.

To begin with, he did not even know how old she was or whether she was still in India. He had managed to glean from Carrisford that she was in school, but it could have been school in the healthful Himalayan mountains or school back in England. Crewe himself had been a man beset with misfortunes that prevented the normal channels Holmes might have followed: his documents had been destroyed by fire; most of his regiment had been slaughtered in what was originally a small border skirmish with a stubborn maharajah; and the brain fever virus had decimated the community of English people who might know where a British Army captain had sent his daughter to be educated. After months of searching in India, with the slow fever moving into his own brain, he at last found someone who told him that the child's dead mother had been French and that Captain Crewe had probably sent her to school in France. Only then would he allow Ram Dass, Carrisford's servant who had steadfastly refused to leave Holmes' side after his sahib's death, to bring him back to England. He nearly died on the voyage over.

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**Author's note: I know next to nothing about viral meningitis, one of the possible explanations for Captain Crewe and Tom Carrisford's brain fever, so please forgive any inaccuracies.**


	3. Chapter 3

Despite his ill health, despite the confusion of his cherished brain, Holmes was determined to continue the search for little Sara Crewe. It took some time to convince him to let me do it instead, that in his condition he would kill himself instead of finding her, but when even Mary joined in in the convincing, he agreed. Mary's ready imagination and soft heart had been quickly touched by what I told her of the missing little girl, now an orphan, perhaps turned out into the streets when her bills could no longer be paid, or perhaps kindly sheltered (we could only pray it was the latter), and when my children learned why their Papa would be spending much of the next months in France, they were more willing to part with me.

No one wants to hear about my futile searches all over France following some vague notions of Holmes', so I shall tell instead about my children's interest in the case and their unconscious involvement during the months I was abroad. The older girls, Janet and Nora, were enchanted by visions of an heiress perhaps their own age in rags, like a princess in a story; my eldest son John, Janet's twin, tried to persuade me that it would be very educational for an eight-year-old boy if I took him along on the search, and my younger son Donald, who had been moved to tears by a pantomime of the Danish story "The Little Match Girl" over the Christmas holidays, was quite desperate that the little heiress should not fall prey to the same fate, as indeed we all were. Baby Harriet was not yet old enough to care. The children had taken to calling her "the little un-fairy princess," because clearly she was not a fairy but she was as rich as a princess, and if she were found, her story would be like a fairy tale.

Meanwhile, they and their friends the Carmichael children (whose father James Carmichael was a solicitor and was assisting me in my search in France) had developed an interest in another little girl, now that impoverished little girls were paramount in their thoughts. Members of a very large family, the four middle children spent much of their Christmas holidays with my four older children, and it was one of their favorite things to sit at the windows and make up stories about the people who passed by. One servant child passed by very often, usually heavily laden down with baskets of purchases for the kitchen of the school next to Holmes. She was older than the "un-fairy princess" of their imaginations, about twelve or thirteen, and much darker than we all pictured little Sara Crewe to be in our minds, having seen the picture Carrisford had given Holmes of the bright, vibrant Ralph Crewe, but her frequent passing, her bedraggled and too-small but well-made clothes, and her dark, thoughtful eyes drew all the children to her. I am sure she had no idea how many times a horde of children would rush to the windows to watch her pass anytime one of them called out that she was coming, and how they invented stories about her which all ended up sounding remarkably like Sara Crewe's because it was the most romantic story they knew, and how they affectionately called her "the-little-girl-who-is-not-a-beggar" because Janet, their little leader, had one day proclaimed that she was not one.

They were all encouraged in their obsession with the servant girl by Holmes' faithful servant and nurse Ram Dass, to whom they were all devoted, despite the fact that they could not speak to him because he knew very little English and they no Hindustani. They knew Ram Dass well because he was often at our house conveying Holmes' physical condition to Mary and because, in his illness, boredom, and depression, Holmes had developed an unforeseen interest in the children's company, in small doses. John and Janet, his godchildren, would often go over together; they were very good at helping him take an interest in their small doings without being noisy about it, and he amused himself by solving their small problems and trying to prove to himself that his mental powers were unimpaired, though we both knew that was not true. Nora sometimes visited with Janet, and only on rare occasions was Donald, who had not yet learned precisely how to speak to an invalid, allowed to go with the older children. When they were not "cheering up Mr Holmes," as they called it, they were following Ram Dass all over the house and pretending like they understood what he said to them. He managed to convey to them that he had met the-little-girl-who-is-not-a-beggar, because the attic she lived in adjoined the attic he had chosen for his own room, and they had both looked out of their windows at the same struggling sunset. He was not able to tell them that she had spoken to him in his own dialect of Hindustani; he had some idea that her speaking of his language in a strange land was a manifestation of the gods rather than a natural part of his interaction with another human. But one very cold night, as he rejoiced in the warmth of a glowing fire in his own room, it occurred to him that a downtrodden servant girl in a school might not have such warmth, and he had slipped across the slanting roof and looked into her room and discovered it dark and cold and lonely.

Somehow he managed to convey this to my children, in his own way, which they, children unconcerned with the details of language, understood readily, and he told them his idea of slipping into her room some day when she was out and starting a fire in her bare little grate, so that it would appear that a Djinn had done it. This delighted them, and Janet cried, "Should it not also be lovely to leave her a nice hot tea? I am certain she often looks very hungry," and demonstrated her idea to Ram Dass by holding out her cup of weak tea and gesturing in the direction of the school next door. His face lit with smiles, she told me later, and he urged her to tell her godfather of their idea.

Janet by now was an expert in dealing with her ill and often irritable and depressed godfather. She knew how to speak quietly to prevent the debilitating headaches that loud noises could cause him and how to demonstrate her quick intelligence and observant mind in conversation. She had no idea that he believed his intelligence to be destroyed, his reason for existing swept away: she only knew he was ill and sad and fascinating and needed tender and unobtrusive cheering up. Holmes, thinking so much of the little girl he believed himself to have wronged, found himself growing fond of the little girl who had a claim on him as his goddaughter.

"Godfather Holmes," she said, "Ram Dass and I have had an idea to make a fairy story for the-little-girl-who-is-not-a-beggar."

"The-little-girl-who-is-not-a-beggar? A very descriptive term."

"Donald gave her a sixpence once, because he thought she was, and one could tell she wasn't when she took it."

"Really? How could you tell, Janet?"

She dimpled, as she always did when he asked her to display her observational skills for him. "She didn't curtsey and say, 'Thank yer kindly, little master.' She went a little red. I think she was hurt, but you know Donald. He is so sweet one can't really get angry at him. She always wears clothes that are too small and very old, but they are not rags. Anyhow, she is a servant at the seminary next door. They always send her out in the worst weather, and she looks so cold and hungry sometimes!"

"And your idea is to be her fairy godmother, is it?"

"How did you know?"

"It was obvious. You and Ram Dass together could be nothing but romantically practical, which seems to me to be the essence of a fairy godmother. What do you wish to do?"

"Her room is just on the other side of the wall from Ram Dass's room, and he told us that it is very cold and ugly, and we want to make it warm—and beautiful! Could we make it beautiful? We want to put a fire in the grate and bring her tea and cakes and sandwiches, so it will be like magic when she comes in late and cold! And maybe we could put some pretty things in there! I would give the coloured picture of the Indian ladies Mama let me tear out of the Strand Magazine last week. He could pin it to her wall like I have it pinned to mine."

Holmes watched her closely, then looked around at all the beautiful Indian things Ram Dass had put in the sitting room he and I used to share, things he hardly looked at and didn't care for. "Why should you not give her some of these things?" he said languidly. "Ram Dass seems to have filled up my rooms unnecessarily."

"Oh, Godfather Holmes!" Janet clasped her hands together in delight. "Could we? John could help Ram Dass carry things across the roof."

"I do not think your parents should care for him going out on the roof. But you might ask the oldest Carmichael boy to assist."

"Godfather Holmes, you always have the best ideas," she said fervently and brought a smile to his thin face.

"God grant that it may continue to be so," he murmured.


	4. Chapter 4

Ram Dass spoke a different dialect of Hindustani than Holmes had learnt in India, so their communication was not greatly better than that of Ram Dass and the children, and Holmes learned little that could tell him more about the-little-girl-who-is-not-a-beggar than that she was a servant. In normal circumstances, I am certain he would have rapidly discovered her identity from the small clues available, but his brain was tired and oppressed from his long illness, and he was only amused by the children's ideas and the logistics of working them out with Ram Dass. Mary told me later she was so glad to see him taking an interest in something that she curtailed nothing they chose to do, as unlikely an idea as it was to create a fairy story for someone else's servant girl. Ram Dass told the children about the little girl's joy in the warmth and food and few rich Indian things he brought to her room the first night and how she shared it with her fellow servant girl who slept in the attic next to her, and the children told Holmes. I have known a time when he would have disdained anything resembling the sentimentality of fairy stories for little girls and allowing children to confide in him, but now it was good for him, took his mind off his guilt and worry and depression, gave him other things to think about and raise his spirits.

I returned home in mid March, a singularly cold, wet, and unpleasant March, after nearly three months of fruitless searching through the schools of Paris and Marseilles. I had a hopeful lead, however, and my friend Carmichael had gone on to follow it up. A school that had recently closed in Paris had once had a little girl as a student whose last name was Crew, Crewe, or Carewe, whose rich father had died in India, and who had been adopted by wealthy Russians and taken back to Moscow. Carmichael, having spent part of March at home with his family, had volunteered to go to Russia to find her and find out if she was Ralph Crewe's daughter so that I could return home to my family and Holmes.

The children were full of their stories about being fairy godmother to the-little-girl-who-is-not-a-beggar, and I was astonished at how well I found Holmes looking. Not like his old self, still weak and languid, still shadowed in his eyes, still despairing of his future, but he smiled when Janet and Nora visited with me to make further plots with Ram Dass.

"I see you did not expect me to ever become so childish, Watson," he said to me. "Well, it has been a diversion, a welcome one. That is all."

I hated to tell him that France had resulted in nothing but one lead that was a long shot. In his condition, it sank him back into his depression.

"The idea, Watson," he said bitterly, "that the last thing I did as a consulting detective was to ruin two fine young men and impoverish and orphan a child makes me wish I had not survived that nightmare voyage across the ocean."

"Holmes, I wish you would not give in to these ideas. It is by no means certain that that _was_ your last act as a consulting detective. I am convinced that you will go on to greater successes than ever before. It only takes time to recover from the brain fever. You cannot expect instant recovery, but there is no reason to despair of recovery. And we _will_ find the little girl. Even now Carmichael is well on his way to Russia and will telegraph us his news within very few weeks. There is not long left to wait."

"I hate remaining inactive," Holmes said gloomily. "And yet I can decide upon no certain course of action. What if the child in Russia is not the child we seek? What then?"

"I was thinking about that on my way home, my dear fellow," I answered. "Crewe's wife was French, but he was English. There is no reason to assume he did _not_ send the child to school in England. Why should we not make a search here in London? Why, there is a school just next door, as my children have reminded me every hour since I came home."

"Watson, you are an invaluable friend. Never let it be said that I belittled your mind. If Carmichael's news is not what we want it to be, you yourself will begin again next door."


	5. Chapter 5

Two weeks later, a telegram came from Carmichael, not the news I wanted.

**CHILD IS EMILY CAREW, NOT SARA CREWE STOP**

** SORRY WATSON STOP**

** COMING HOME STOP**

** CARMICHAEL**

Janet, Nora, and Donald were all visiting Holmes when I received the telegram and went to tell him the news, reluctantly. I was reluctant to take up my wearisome search again and even more reluctant to disappoint my friend again, but it must be done, for the sake of the little girl, if we were ever to find her.

Donald, it seemed when I arrived, had been cheering up Holmes a bit too energetically, and the girls were quite ready to take him away to play with Ram Dass. I went in to my friend; he was looking very tired, his head propped on his thin hand. His violin case was in a corner on a table, unopened in months; no penknife held down his post on the mantel. I wished rather heartily for the old days, when he stunk up the house with his chemicals and woke me in the middle of the night with his violin.

"News?" he asked. "I see you have a telegram. From Carmichael? The child the Russian people adopted?"

"She is not the child we are looking for," I told him straight. "Her name is Emily Carew."

He looked so very wearied and miserable, sitting and looking hopelessly into the fire. I wished for my old friend back again, that none of this had ever happened, that he had never heard of the country of India, as he had once never heard that the earth went around the sun.

"We must begin again at once," he said in a low voice. "No time must be lost. Once I could have told you how many establishments for young English girls there are in London and where each one lay. Now I can only think of the one next door, about which I know nothing except that there is a dark, forlorn little creature in an attic there, and at night I dream that those two bright young fellows hover about me and reproach me that little Sara might be in the same position as that child, or worse."

It really seemed like magic, a miracle, to us all later, that the door should open just then and that Ram Das should enter, salaaming respectfully, but with a scarcely concealed touch of excitement in his dark, flashing eyes. He spoke rapidly in his native language, of which Holmes caught just a few words, and then he tried to translate for himself.

"Sahib Holmes, Little-Not-A-Beggar—is come. Is come." He made a sweeping motion of his hand, as if to welcome her into the room.

"She is here?" Holmes repeated, sitting up a little straighter.

"Yes, Sahib. Little-Not-A-Beggar."

"Ask her to step up." He sounded just as he used to, when telling Mrs Hudson to bring up a client, but he imitated Ram Dass's hand sweep with his own hand.

Ram Dass beamed. "Yes, Sahib."

"Do you have any idea who this child actually is?" I asked as Ram Dass disappeared.

"None at all. A common little drudge in the school—but emphatically not a beggar. Your little Janet made that quite clear. A silly, sentimental thing, encouraging children's fairy stories and playing fairy godmother, but I have been desperate while you were away. This has been worse than the old days of boredom, and the silliness has served to divert me somewhat."

"A better diversion than your old remedy," I replied dryly and received a flicker of a smile in return.

"Perhaps."

Then the little girl came into the room. She was slightly older than I expected, and she was thin and dark, almost foreign-looking, as if some part of her did not belong to England at all but was always far away in exotic lands.

"I am sorry to disturb you," she said to Holmes, in a pretty, low, clear voice, her speech very surprisingly well-bred. "I knew you were ill, but—but—" She flushed a little, the color showing well on her pale cheeks. "Miss Minchin, who owns the establishment next door, thought that as you were a famous detective, you would oblige her by assisting with a problem she has. It—it is a missing piece of jewelry, which belongs to a pupil whose father is powerful and could cause her trouble. She says if you would be so kind as to take her case, she would call on you this afternoon."

She was clearly uncomfortable with her message, her eyes continually resting on Holmes as if she were sorry for him, sorry for her errand, sorry he must be disturbed by trivial school matters. I have heard him take no pains to conceal his disdain for people who brought him inconsequential problems, but his voice as he spoke to the little servant girl was very gentle.

"I am afraid I am not taking cases just now, and indeed may never do so again."

"I am sorry," she said sincerely. "I hope your illness has not taken away your cases, though I thought perhaps you would not like to be disturbed while you were ill."

Holmes' hollow eyes dwelt on her with curious interest. Perhaps he was seeing more in her than he had done before. "That was very thoughtful of you," he said. "You knew I was a detective?"

"Everyone in Miss Minchin's seminary has thought it very romantic to live next to a great detective, though when the _lascar_ began furnishing this house, we thought perhaps it had been taken by an Indian gentleman."

I saw a new look come into Holmes' eyes. "How do you know he is a _lascar_?"

"Oh, I know _lascars_. I was born in India."

His hand clenched very suddenly, so suddenly she started. "You were born in India," he exclaimed, "were you? Come here." And he held out his hand.

She put a roughened little paw in his, and her grey-green eyes met his wonderingly as he examined her hard, read all her secrets in her eyes and her dress.

"You live next door, but you are not one of the pupils."

A strange little smile hovered about her mouth. "I don't think I know exactly _what_ I am," she replied.

"Not a pupil, sent about like a servant, but not fully a servant, are you?"

"I—I run errands for the cook—I do anything she tells me; and I teach the little ones their lessons. I sleep in the attic, next to the scullery-maid."

Holmes' hand was trembling under hers as weakness swept over him. "Watson—question her, Watson."

"How did you come to be at the school?" I asked her gently, in an encouraging voice.

"I was a pupil there once. My papa brought me there, long ago, from India."

"Where is your papa?"

"He died," she said, very quietly. "He lost all his money and there was none left for me. There was no one to take care of me or to pay Miss Minchin."

"Watson—Watson!"

I put out my hand to Holmes, found him slightly feverish. "We must not frighten her," I said to him in a quick, low voice. I turned to Ram Dass in the doorway. "Mrs Watson," I said, which he understood, and with a bow he hurried away to fetch my wife, while I returned to the child. "So you were sent up into the attic and made into a little drudge. That was about it, wasn't it?"

"There was no one to take care of me. There was no money. I belong to nobody."

"How did your father lose his money?" Holmes broke in.

"He did not lose it himself. He had friends he trusted, one he was very fond of. They lied to him, and the one took his money. He trusted them too much."

Holmes' breath came quickly. "The friends might have _meant_ to do no harm," he said. "It might have happened through a mistake. They may have suffered greatly for it."

She did not know how unrelenting her quiet young voice sounded as she answered. "The suffering was just as bad for my papa," she said. "It killed him."

Holmes' haggard face contracted. "Tell me," he said. He was weakening, still holding her hand in his thin, trembling hand. "Tell me, was your father's name Captain Ralph Crewe?"

She stood staring at him with great grey-green eyes. "How—how could you know?"

"Sara—you are Sara?"

"Yes," she said wonderingly. "Sara Crewe."

"Watson!" he gasped, "it is the child—the child!"

I went quickly to him and poured out a few drops of his strengthening tonic, held them to his lips. The child was trembling, and as soon as Holmes was steady again, I went to her and gently took her hand.

"What child am I?" she asked me, bewildered.

"He knew your father in India," I answered her. "Don't be frightened. He and your father's other dear friend between them were looking for you for two years."

Sara put her hand up to her forehead, and her mouth trembled. She spoke as if she were in a dream.

"And I was at Miss Minchin's all the while," she half whispered. "Just on the other side of the wall."

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**Author's Note: Devotees of "A Little Princess" will notice that much of this chapter is taken directly from the book, but I adapted it to suit my version of the story. **


	6. Chapter 6

"Papa, what is going on?" Janet whispered, looking a little frightened. Her mother had just come to take a very confused Sara aside and explain things to her in her warm, motherly way, and I had briefly left Holmes to Ram Dass's care to explain everything to my children, who had heard Holmes crying out.

"Your little-girl-who-is-not-a-beggar is also your little un-fairy princess," I told them. "She is Sara Crewe. We have just discovered it. Your Godfather Holmes is very happy, but the shock has weakened him a little. He will be alright, though, now that the little girl is found."

Janet put her hands over her mouth. "_She_ is the un-fairy princess?"

Donald jumped up and down for joy. "Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!"

Nora tried to shush him.

"I wish John could be here instead of at school," Janet said. "Oh, Papa, shall we get to meet her?"

In answer, her mother came leading Sara to where we were, giving me a _Go to him_ jerk of the head. The children flocked to her. I heard Sara saying quietly, "Was he—was he one of the _wicked_ friends?"

I was glad she had waited until she was out of the room before she asked that, and equally glad my wife was there to explain the truth to her. Who knew what her young imagination had told her about the intentions of the man responsible for her father's death? Could she possibly understand and believe that no malice was intended, that it had been a disastrous combination of mistakes, bad business sense, trusting the wrong people, and the ravages of brain fever? Could she ever possibly forgive the only person left to blame?

I went in to Holmes and was astonished at the change in him, at the color in his face and how he was sitting up straight and how his long fingers were steadily tamping tobacco into his long-abandoned pipe. He did not light it, though.

"Watson, my mind feels so clear suddenly."

"That is the worry over that girl's life and future leaving you," I said, sitting across from him.

"She speaks Ram Dass's dialect. If only he had been able to tell me that months ago! I have been unable to see all the clues pointing so clearly right next door."

"You've been ill. I do wish you would stop blaming yourself for what an illness has done. Think of the future now."

"We must decide what is to be done with her. I don't know what to do with a young girl, but I can't imagine that she would want to go back to the school next door. They were not at all kind or just to her there."

I didn't say anything for a moment. I could not quite imagine him doing what I had suddenly conceived of as the best plan. The girl had lost not wealth but home and father. What had Holmes but a home and an older, masculine presence? He had everything but a person to care for. But the idea of him adopting a little girl was nearly ludicrous.

I caught some of the old sharpness in his eyes as I looked up at him, like he could see what I was thinking. Before either of us could say anything, though, we heard a timid tap at the door, and it opened slowly to reveal a small, dark figure with pale face and shining grey-green eyes like stars.

"Was it _you_ who were my friend?" she breathed. "Were _you_ the one who made the Magic—who gave me everything?"

"I did nearly nothing," Holmes said. "The idea was Ram Dass's and Dr Watson's children's. I only facilitated the logistics."

Before we knew what had happened, she flew to him, knelt on the carpet beside his chair, caught his hand, and pressed her lips to it again and again. "Oh, thank you, thank you! You don't know how awful it was in that attic—and then how wonderful, to wake up in a magical world and to know that _someone somewhere_ was my friend!"

I know Holmes didn't feel he deserved the gratitude for what he and Ram Dass and my children and the oldest Carmichael boy had done, but instead of speaking, his thin hand went out to touch her dark hair and I saw an expression in his eyes I had never seen there before. I thought, dumbly, gratefully, _Great God, the man will be himself again in a month._


	7. Chapter 7

Well, Sherlock Holmes did the unforeseen and adopted a thirteen-year-old girl. He tried to tell me that it was only what Crewe and Carrisford would have wanted him to do and that he was merely fulfilling a debt, nothing sentimental about it, but those of us who knew him best knew that was not the full truth. I could see something had changed in him when in joyous gratitude the little princess in rags kissed his hand—when she gave him a devotion that completely transcended whatever responsibility he may have had in her father's death.

As I foresaw, he recovered quickly from the last shreds of the brain fever and showed that he had lost no whit of his keen intellect and his shrewd observation. He demonstrated it first that very day when the headmistress of the school next door, Miss Maria Minchin, came and made a scene about Sara returning to her patronage. Sara stood quietly, tense but unafraid, next to Holmes with her hand on his arm as Miss Minchin first commanded her to return to her drudgery and then tried to force her to return to her own ungentle care as a pupil. At first Holmes merely listened to her outrageous demands, and then he proceeded to turn her upside-down and inside-out with his observations on her person and her method of running her school. He told her straight that he would expose her to all her clients but for the fact that they would then promptly come and take their daughters away and it was much more convenient for Sara to have her friends next door rather than scattered in other schools all over London. Her methods of dealing with her pupils had perforce to change after that, now that there was a frighteningly-sharp detective next door who could tell simply from the way a little friend of his daughter's was dressed whether her headmistress was kind to her or not.

The little un-fairy princess was more than their princess: she was their queen, both the schoolgirls' and my children's and the Carmichael children's. Far from being jealous at her place being usurped by the older girl, my little Janet practically worshipped her and was treated as a favorite sister. Sara had a genius for making children love her, and not children alone, for we all doted on her. She became nearly a goddess to the army of street children Holmes ended up amassing to help him in his work. It was her idea to provide for the poor children she had once been part of; it was his to employ them as small detectives in his own work. A little girl named Anne Sara had once given her own dinner to became a lieutenant among them, but their captain was my own Janet, who, Holmes said, had a strategic and observational mind unlike any other child he had ever met. Sara is Holmes' daughter, but his goddaughter will be his successor, he declares.

Sara is now eighteen years old, still slim and dark and mysteriously foreign-looking, still full of fantasy and fancy, still in many ways the child who shivered in an attic and forgave a world of guilt for a chance at a friend, but grown up and lovely. My wife has been bespying hints of a romance with the oldest Carmichael boy, four years older than she, who played his own small part in the Magic that changed her life. Holmes, with a frown, says there is plenty of time for that in the future, that she is full young for romance. In truth he is reluctant to let her go.

I must confess that my premonition that he would be himself again was not entirely accurate. Holmes was never quite the same man again, not after believing himself responsible for the deaths of two young men and the pain of a little girl, not after months of brain fever and depression, not after find himself all-in-all to a little girl with enchantment in her eyes. He had a greater depth after that, a new richness, something to live for beyond the resources of his own brain. He is a different Holmes than I knew before his "death," a better version of himself. It has not hurt his career at all.

* * *

**Author's Note: The end!  
**

**Yes, I purposefully changed the timeline with the Baker Street Irregulars. **


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